business cards for writers

I have something cool to show you.

But first, some background.

Years ago, I used to take pictures, usually of flowers, sometimes of homeschool projects, often of my kids.

Then I got lazy. The camera was too unwieldy to take everywhere, it was too much of a pain to get the pictures off it, and my husband got an iPhone so it was easy for him to pull it out and snap a picture or two.

I got used to this, so when my cool new business cards arrived, I said (as usual), “Dear, can you pull out your iPhone and snap a picture of these?”

My obliging husband er… obliged, and took this picture:

Oh, dear. The brown background gave the black-and-white cover of Shattered an unfortunate sepia tint (not to mention my husband and his cell phone are usually only around after work in the evenings, when one has to use artificial lighting anyway–which can be trying).

So I asked him to take a picture with a light background.

He did so.

The Shattered cover looks closer to normal, but there’s that flash glare on the Rainbird one…

At this point my husband gave me the no-more-pictures-do-it-yourself look and went upstairs to give the youngest child a bath. I toyed with idea of posing the cards one more time, perhaps even unearthing the digital camera out of the depths of… wherever it is, fiddling with cables and getting into the photo-managing software.

That sounded tiring, even to me.

So there you have them: cell phone pics in trying lighting of my new business cards, which are ten times cooler than what they look like in this picture.

Pertinent details:

• I used Moo for these cards. They came in two packs of 50. The “I break fairy tales” version comes with the Shattered cover. The “I fuse fantasy & science fiction” comes in Rainbird and Mourning Cloak flavors.
• Perhaps I should have gone with rounded edges? Any thoughts on that for next time?
• The QR codes go straight to my website. If I’d been clever–or had more time–I could’ve set up a special business-card-exclusive page on my site for goodies, but I didn’t. Note to self: Remember that for next time. However: QR codes! Eeek! I’ve always wanted them!
• They came with a 15%-off coupon code for first time card orders, so if you want it, leave me a comment and I’ll email it to you.

The reason why I hurried up and got these is because:

a) I meet people in Real Life. Sometimes I even tell them I’m a writer. Sometimes they even ask about my books and seem interested when I tell them. Sometimes I wish I had a business card to give them. Well now I do!

b) I’m going to Balticon at the end of the month! With the husband. Who will have his cell phone. So there will be pics. Trying pics, probably, but pics nonetheless.

Do you have writer business cards? Take a picture (with a cell phone, of course *wink*) and share them with us! Do you have other offline marketing tactics to share?